By Elena Fabrichnaya
MOSCOW, Dec 2 (Reuters) – Russia’s second-largest bank VTB is in talks to buy a major agricultural producer, CEO Andrei Kostin said on Tuesday, as part of its drive to create a national champion in the sector.
Kostin said state-controlled VTB was helping the government manage the assets of AgroTerra, one of Russia’s top 20 agricultural landholders, which were placed under temporary state management in April 2024.
“We are currently managing and helping the government manage AgroTerra, which belongs to an American investor,” Kostin told reporters. U.S.-based NCH, which also has assets in Ukraine, still lists AgroTerra as one of its businesses.
Kostin did not say who VTB was negotiating with over AgroTerra, nor how the talks were progressing. He gave no details of VTB’s plans for the assets.
“We will have to do something with it anyway,” Kostin said. Russian state banks have accumulated vast non-core assets during periods of economic turbulence and now run large parts of the economy.
AgroTerra operates in several central regions, cultivating 265,000 hectares and running 19 grain elevators with capacity to store up to 500,000 metric tons of grain.
A POTENTIAL NATIONAL CHAMPION
In an interview with Reuters this week, Kostin said VTB planned to create a large agricultural holding from assets it has acquired. The bank bought previously nationalised agricultural assets in southern regions in December 2024.
Kostin said the new holding would focus on domestic processing of grains and other products and suggested the company, whose creation could take up to five years, might be sold later.
It was not clear whether VTB would fold AgroTerra into the new holding if its bid succeeds, but Kostin mentioned AgroTerra when asked if the bank was pursuing more deals in the sector.
The assets Kostin referred to in the interview were nationalised in 2023 after an arrest warrant was issued for former owner Andrei Korovaiko and his business partner Arkady Chebanov, who were accused of corruption.
The assets have since been consolidated into a new company called Agrocomplex Labinski, which owns 240,000 hectares and produces grains, milk, sugar and other products. Labinski says it exports up to 400,000 tons of grains and oilseeds annually.
The combined assets of the two companies would create one of Russia’s largest agricultural firms, reshaping a rapidly developing sector in the world’s biggest wheat exporter.
(Additional reporting by Olga Popova. Writing by Gleb Bryanski. Editing by Mark Potter)
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